Consultancy
“Artificial intelligence is whatever hasn't been done yet.”
A friend recently asked me: “How do you feel describing yourself as an AI Consultant in 2026?” It was a question loaded with inference.
AI is getting the blame for everything from hallucinating (lying!), to destroying the job market through automation, and even global warming. Of late, it’s busy collapsing the economy as the “AI bubble” pops. And yet, I couldn’t be more excited to be here, right now, in 2026, working in AI.
I am knee deep in the tech for the first time in years, and finding joy in the play in a way I’ve not for nearly 25 years. Vibe coding has replaced TV for me as a great way to unwind and on occasion cause me to shout at my screen. And I am utterly, endlessly fascinated by the legal, compliance and ethical aspects of this technology. The space between what you can do, what we should do and what we are probably allowed to do is less defined and moving faster than at any time I have seen, or can imagine. And it’s wonderful!
Let me illustrate - if you are selling a SaaS solution right now it will almost certainly contain AI. You might be selling into several industries and into several countries. How do you ensure your products (in the case of SaaS that includes how you manage the customer data) align to the legal and regulatory requirements of a Belgian Charity, a US political think tank and a UK Public Authority? And is the time you invest into answering that question for today going to align to the world in 6, 9 or 12 months? Or in more direct sales language - will the compliance landscape change materially during a sales cycle? Yep, probably.
If you’re reading this thinking - none of that is AI?! You are at least partly correct. GDPR has been operating in this area for a while, but there is a real difference with the AI layer on top. The speed and type of change in SaaS software; everyone feels the need to offer some form of AI in their products to remain competitive. Many base it on in-house services which help simplify this, but to meet the speed of change and scarcity of compute to deliver AI, many pass the AI part of the service out the back to third parties; customer data might now be sitting on OpenAI services in Switzerland for the first half of the year, procured through your AWS contract, then because you needed more capacity, or pricing or functionality shifts, you spend the second half of the year on Anthropic services bought via your Azure contract.
The picture is wonderfully rich and complex even if you could freeze it today. And the world around this picture is doing anything but sitting still. But which do you watch? The EU AI Act, the UK’s pro-innovation approach to AI and associated regulatory guidance, and the US NIST AI Risk Management Framework - or maybe all three! Some of these are extensions of existing rules, some are new. But they are all coming in hard and fast.
More than ever, an understanding of this landscape is the critical basis for buying, selling and using services, and an open, pragmatic mind able to find solutions, agree deals and put in place processes, structures are the critical skills, allowing business to carry on in a safe way. I am finding a great deal of joy in helping companies and individuals navigate it.
